Help From Cyberspace With Your Brain Injury Case

I. What is the Web/Internet?

The Web or internet is a massive interconnection of computers around the planet. To help conceptualize what the Web is, picture a road map of this country. If you see only the lines, such lines would also look like a Web. And frankly, the Web is much like a road system. Data on the Web is stored in remote computers, not one central computer. Retrieving information on the Web is like driving to remote libraries, where the information you seek is stored. To get there, your computer must navigate through this system of pathways, much like you would in your car, to communicate with the computer that holds the library of information you seek.

There is nothing terribly abstract about one computer talking through digital noise, to another computer. It is same process as a fax machine.

While a Web address that starts http://www. anything.com may seem like so much Greek, it is really only a telephone number. One computer finds another computer in the same way one fax machine finds another fax machine, by calling this phone number through this alternative system of pathways (interstate highway like pathways) called the Web.

Think internet, interstate.

II. Getting on the Computer Interstate

A. Hardware. To drive on the interstate you need a car, and a car capable of driving the speed limit. Likewise, to get on the internet, you need a computer, and a computer capable of dealing with the type and speed of information you will receive.

B. Access. Just like you cannot get on an interstate highway from any surface street, you cannot get on the internet simply by having your computer dial any other computer. You must find an entrance ramp. The entrance ramps are service providers.

C. Software. A web browser.

III. How to Find What is on the Web

Remember that the Web is nothing more than the road system. What you are doing when you are on the Web is traveling to remote libraries of information and reading what is there. Just as you need a card catalog to find anything in a library, you need access to a cataloging system to find anything off the internet. This is where the true breakthrough has come with the Web, in the ease and speed of sorting through a world of information.

The primary source for cataloging information on the Web is through search services, called search engines.

IV. Brain Injury Resources on the Web

There are hundreds of good Web pages devoted to brain injury and related topics. Almost all the pages that show up on a search of Yahoo are worthy of the trip. Of all the pages on the Web devoted to brain injury, one stands out:

A. http://www.waiting.com/ The Coma Waiting Page. A page designed to answer questions for those who are waiting while a loved one is in a coma. Outstanding information about brain injury, including detailed brain anatomy charts and a brain injury glossary. waiting.com started in response to the opportunity that we had to donate a WebTV to one hospital in Wisconsin. In response to such opportunity, Becca Martin created a page which is not only the watermark page for brain injury education and advocacy, it has changed how Web designers view what can be achieved through the Web. But this page is too important to be limited to only Wisconsin trauma centers. In its first month, without more than word of e-mouth mention of this page, it received 26,000 hits.

B. http://www.biausa.org If you are looking for another place to start, try the home page of the BIA: http://www.biausa.org

V. Legal Authority on the Web

The best place to start is either the ABA page, or the bar association page in your state. Most of these pages have substantial case law uploaded for that jurisdiction.

VI. Government Pages

Some of the best pages on the Web are government pages, such as the Social Security home page: http://www.ssa.gov/SSA_Home.html or the ADA pages, which are listed at http://www.tbilaw.com/ADA.php. There is a page for almost every major government agency.

VII. Medical Pages

A. Literature Searches.

B. Multimedia Learning Tools. A couple of the best things on the Web, are illustrated anatomy pages, Harvard's is absolutely terrific. Also Mayo clinic has a very nice radiology site.

VIII. Becoming Part of the Web Community

A. Email Lists. One of the most significant aspects of life on the Web is the existence of mailing lists. An email list is a pen pal group, where each member of the group can publish his comments or opinions to all members of the group. Email lists allow those with shared interests to communicate, lobby, network and trade information about almost any topic, including brain injury advocacy and lawyering.

B. http://www.whyme.com? The cost of having your own home page is not astronomical. If you want a home page, you also want a domain name. A domain name is an easily remembered word or words, which follow the www. such as waiting.com This makes promoting and remembering your own URL (or home page telephone number) so much easier.

An effective home page will take a significant investment of the lawyers time to put together, not in Web authoring, but in conceptualization and maintenance of information.

We all can rattle off a bunch of brain injury statistics. But did you ever stop to think how many cases those statistics represent and how few of them are being handled by competent counsel? A fair estimate is that Wisconsin has 1,000 brain injury related deaths a year, 5,300 cases involving hospitalization, and 27,000 involving ER treatment and release. All of these cases involved some type of accident. Most of my practice has come from the ER treated and released category. If I handled 54 of those a year, that is only .2% of those cases. That means 99.8% of those people would be represented by someone, if they got a lawyer, who had never spoken at a brain injury seminar.

Even on the Web, we are not competitors. Even the lawyer or law firm you are most competitive with, is not your competitor. Our competition is ignorance, not just that brain injury is severe, common, permanent and disabling. But also the ignorance that a lawyer is an important part of the team that helps people get better and deal with their disability.

The Web will make a difference. But the key isn't that the Web is going to reshuffle the deck of who gets the cases. The key is that the Web affords people the opportunity to understand the impact of this tragedy on their lives and choose the resources, including lawyers, who afford them the greatest opportunity for recovery and compensation.

All of you who care should have Web pages. And not Martindale Hubbell Web pages, but pages that provide information that people want, and implicitly say to those who find such information that the lawyer who provided it, knows more about their problems than other lawyers. By use of the term Martindale Hubbell pages, I am talking about pages that give little more information than is found in Martindale Hubbell, and what information they provide is limited to information about the law firm.

If all of you had Web pages, our penetration of the market for brain injury would materially go up from that .02% figure. If we each got 2% of the cases in our trade area, that is 540 ER cases and 106 cases involving hospitalization each year.

When you start looking at the numbers, it is obvious that if we can find a way to increase our penetration into the market, their would be a serious shortage of brain injury lawyers. "Would be" is obviously wrong. There clearly is a severe shortage. But as the economists would say, our imperfect market has left us with a disequilibrium of supply and demand. The Web will improve the equilibrium.

IX. Conclusion

The Web is exploding in terms of usage. It is the opportunity to communicate with anyone in the world, on any topic you choose. If you can focus the information you want the world to see, package it, index it, your opinions, ideas and information will be found by those to whom it is relevant. The opportunity to teach, persuade and influence is staggering.

 

 

Understanding Subtle Brain Injury

The concussions that disable, are almost always more symptomatic at 24 hours, than at the 2-4 hour time frame when injured persons are evaluated in the emergency room. Brain injury symptoms escalate over the first 24 hours, because brain injury involves a cascade of events. It is critical that if you are still symptomatic the day after your injury, go back to the same Emergency Room, don’t wait for a doctors appointment. It is critical that the Emergency Room personnel see that the symptoms still persist or have gotten worse.

 

 

Contact the Brain Injury Law Group: 1-800-992-9447

This site is brought to you by the advocates of the Brain Injury Law Group, a community of plaintiff's trial lawyers across the United States united by a common interest in serving the rights of persons with traumatic brain injuries and a common commitment to fully understanding the anatomic, medical and psychological aspects of TBI.